Is this a term only to be used when "success" is evident - to understand is to understand correctly or there is no understanding at all - or is there such a thing as "wrong understanding"? — KrisGl
My nights I spend at a bar, smoking and drinking way too much, hunched over some book, being asocial, surrounded by good people who are used to it, like me anyway, and for the most part have no fucking idea why the heck I'm doing all of this. Maybe some of you can sympathize a little more. ;) — KrisGl
What does it mean to understand? Is this a term only to be used when "success" is evident - to understand is to understand correctly or there is no understanding at all - or is there such a thing as "wrong understanding"? — KrisGl
Truth be told, it is difficult to find people interested in these authors, so I hope to find some companionship in this forum. — KrisGl
At least these questions have led me down various paths, including French and German existentalism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of language and American pragmatism. I am currently working on papers involving Jean-Francois Lyotard, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. The last few years were mainly spent with these characters along with Emmanuel Levinas, Samuel Beckett, and some lesser known figures like Josiah Royce or Francois Laruelle (sometimes you just gotta get a little weird). Truth be told, it is difficult to find people interested in these authors, so I hope to find some companionship in this forum. — KrisGl
I have always assumed we don't really understand each other, we just make sense of others the best we can. — Tom Storm
Interesting. Why have you always assumed that? — KrisGl
Have you ever heard of his notion of loyalty to loyalty? I find it moving. — KrisGl
I know very little about it but I have to agree with Royce's basic thrust, as I understand it, that ethics is social and relational. — Tom Storm
Intuition and experience. How could we truly understand each other, except through approximations? Many of us are strangers to ourselves, let alone to others... — Tom Storm
let's call it phenomenological level in everyday life, right? We do somehow, sort of understand each other. Probably never to a "full extent", but somehow we do try. — KrisGl
we just make sense of others the best we can. — Tom Storm
To follow the notion that others are simply not our's to understand, to be radical about that would indeed lead to chaos. — KrisGl
What pragmatic solution would you propose? — KrisGl
I do not find any value in working for professors whose only concern in life is the furtherance of objective truth accompanied by a crusade against people who are of the opinion that "wrong understanding" is a thing — KrisGl
Well, in me you have a kindred spirit, but you will be hard-pressed to find more than a tiny handful of contributors to this forum who endorse anything other than some variant of realism. — Joshs
Reaching that higher level of understanding seems to me to not be a necessary outcome of accepting the fact that neither rashness nor cowardice are worth pursuing. — KrisGl
What would you think of the idea that concern for certitude, for knowing and doing "the right thing" has its rightful place in some realms of acivity/communication, but not in others? — KrisGl
And do you think that once a state of higher understanding is achieved it is stable? Or can we backslide? — KrisGl
Well, do not place too high of a standard on "higher level of understanding" then. — Metaphysician Undercover
There are different levels of certitude which are proper to different subjects of study. I agree with this principle, and we can see it clearly in comparing the consequences of failure in different activities. When the consequences of failure are very significant, then a higher level of certainty is required before proceeding, in comparison with when the consequences of failure are less significant. — Metaphysician Undercover
Not necessarily. I might learn a brand of shirts, X, is manufactured in country 1. Next day I learn brand Y is manufactured in country 2. Next day I learn Z is country 3. Is my understanding increasing?Well, do not place too high of a standard on "higher level of understanding" then. If you learn something new everyday, then aren't you reaching a higher level of understanding every day? — Metaphysician Undercover
How do we take the step from the doctrine of the mean to a sort of Hegelian higher understanding? — KrisGl
How is it that sometimes this way of risk management thinking is reinterpreted, "aufgehoben" to use Hegel's term? And why is it that every explanation of how we might shift our thinking here seems to be inadequate to explain exactly how it happens? At least no explanation comes to my mind which would lead necessarily to this new way of thinking or maybe being. — KrisGl
Is my understanding increasing? — Patterner
Yes, I would say that learning something new like that is an increase to your understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think it makes sense to say we understand single facts. — Patterner
That's how I see it, also. I don't think it makes sense to say we understand single facts. I can know many facts, but not understand how they are related. This spherical thing is a baseball. This long, thin, tapering thing is a bat. That mound of dirt is called the pitcher's mound. That's three facts that have no obvious connection. Many more facts can be added without any obvious connections.
I took a class on the philosophy of AI not that long ago and it revolved almost entirely on the processes you could use to structure atomic propositions relative to some agent, with desires just represented at a certain sort of atomic belief that needs to be made true (with action being determined by other atomic beliefs about how to make the desire proposition true).
It was interesting, but I couldn't help thinking that this seemed to be structuring the model of intelligence around what is easy to model and not how thought actually works. — Count Timothy von Icarus
That's true. But I don't always learn any amount of any type of understanding underlying anything each time I learn a new fact. I know what metal is. I know what a penny is. I know who Lincoln was. I know about the calendar. Learning that a particular penny in my pocket was minted in 2003 does not give me any new understanding of anything.I don't think it makes sense to say that we know single facts. Knowing requires understanding. So there is always some type of understanding which underlies any instance of knowing. — Metaphysician Undercover
That's true. But I don't always learn any amount of any type of understanding underlying anything each time I learn a new fact. I know what metal is. I know what a penny is. I know who Lincoln was. I know about the calendar. Learning that a particular penny in my pocket was minted in 2003 does not give me any new understanding of anything. — Patterner
I don't know how there can be understanding if there is nothing to understandI think the difficulty here is with your assumption that understanding must be of something. — Metaphysician Undercover
That's exactly my point.Consider understanding to be the relationships which create the whole from the parts. — Metaphysician Undercover
I assume, by 'unobserved', you mean with eyes, or whichever sense.As such, it is an unobserved part of the whole, which is determined through retrospect and logical analysis. — Metaphysician Undercover
Entirely likely. But it is, as you just said, s fact that is learned, And if it 'will be integral to an understanding at a later time,' then it is not when learned. It is just a fact.Context is of the essence here, because a so-called "fact" which is learned as a fact at one time, will be at a later time, integral to an understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.